Braindump

The Tao of Mac - blog/2003-12-21 Tips For New Switchers A lot of people have been moving to the Mac these past few days, so I thought I'd jot down a few notes about my (nigh-on two year) experience. Unpacking & Testing * While unpacking, look at the packaging. There are neat graphical hints of how to unpack every Mac printed on the box. Do leaf through the manual, but (here's the important bit) don't rush it. There are a few important things to know, even if you've had a Mac before. * If you're getting a laptop or flatscreen, boot the Hardware Test off the first install CD (insert the CD and hold down Alt - or Option, as it is called in older keyboards - while the machine boots). Amongst other things, it performs a display test - which is fundamental for picking up "dead" pixels before you start installing stuff (you can also use ScreenQuery). Setting up Mac OS X * The default behavior these days is for the Mac to prompt you for an installation language the first time it boots from the hard disk and, after installing a few files (a few minutes' worth) configure your locale settings. If your Mac boots straight to the Finder or to the login panel, then someone else has used it before. * After setting up your keyboard, language and whatnot, the installer creates the first user account. This is the important bit: it is an administration account, and you're better off calling it "Administrator" (if you're a UNIXhead, this is not root, which is disabled) and creating a "regular" user account later for your own use (you can do it in System Preferences after setup ends). This will not prevent you from making all the silly mistakes people do when using a Mac for the first few months, but it will significantly decrease the odds of you breaking something. (Yes, you can break a Mac OS X install - or files that make subsequent upgrades fail - by mistake when you're the admin user...) Don't: * Use the administration account for anything other than setting up the machine and applications or changing "permanent" settings (if you want to, say, change network settings as a normal user you'll be prompted for the admin password, and since you'll do configuration changes less and less often as time progresses, this isn't a real issue). * Install "toy" applications as the admin user until you're sure you're going to use them. * Ever, ever move Apple applications (such as Mail.app) to other folders. Mac OS X updates are not always very clever at updating built-in apps, so you'll end up with ether two copies of your apps or a single broken one. * Fiddle with the system startup scripts unless you''re sure you know what you're doing. Mac OS X doesn't use runlevels in the same way as "classic" UNIX systems, and things like network configuration, system services, and whatnot are not (necessarily) stored under /etc. You'll figure it out after a while, but don't go in thinking this is "just like any other UNIX system". It both is and isn't like other UNIXes, and like other UNIXes, fiddling under the hood is not to be done lightly. Do: * Get a proper mouse. I've said before that Mac OS X with a single button mouse is like rowing with a single oar, and I mean it: Mac OS X supports multiple-button mice, scroll wheels, etc. I use Microsoft wireless mice (the old kind, not the Bluetooth ones), which work perfectly and can be obtained in white (no sense getting a horrible blue and red mouse, now is there?). Laptop users should get something like uControl or SideTrack to make better use of the trackpad. * Create your own Applications folder inside your home directory and try out new stuff in there. If it breaks, you won't break the machine for other people (and if a Mac OS X app breaks while running under an unprivileged account, it's badly written for sure). * Drag Terminal.app to your dock as soon as possible. UNIX won't bite you, and some things are best done at a terminal. * Spend some time getting used to the accelerator and "special" keys. They make sense after a while, but having the extra Command modifier key and a different meaning for Home and End plays havoc with some people's reflexes. If you're using a desktop Mac with a non-US keyboard, the screen brightness control is often unmarked - try the function keys above the help key. * Install X11 and get Fink, in this order. Set up the placeholder packages to let Fink use Apple's X11 stuff, and then install whatever packages you need to feel at home. Fink is especially nice since it does not, ever, mess around with your Mac OS X system directories (it hangs off /sw, /sw/bin, etc.) and has the most packages available. And that's it for now, really. I have a few friends who are recent Switchers (two each from the Linux and Windows worlds), and will probably edit this post with new hints soon.